Men's Basketball

Thon Maker intrigued by KU

Chicago — Thon Maker, a 7-foot senior center from Orangeville Prep in Mono, Ontario, who attended Friday’s KU-Northern Colorado game on an unofficial recruiting visit, has set his first official visit for Arizona State in late January, his guardian, Ed Smith, told Zagsblog.com.

Maker has a list of KU, ASU, Kentucky, Indiana, Notre Dame and St. John’s. He is planning official visits to KU and Notre Dame.

“As the season goes on, that’s what we look forward to do,” Maker told Zagsblog.com. “Last year I got a chance to take a few visits on the road so I really want to do something like that again. I know I’ll definitely take a few, if not all my officials on the road also, but I don’t know any particular dates.”

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Smith commented to Zagsblog.com on Maker’s interest in KU. “For Thon it’s intriguing to see how the frontline shapes up, who stays, and how things play out with Cheick (Diallo, not yet cleared for participation by NCAA).

“Cheick is such a good kid and it was hard for Thon to watch him sit because they’ve battled in the past and both chase the same dream of playing in the NBA.”

Comments

Is it possible that KU is getting branded (by opposing coaches and recruiting gurus) as the place where guys can't get eligible? I don't know of any other top 25 program that has had the troubles we have had. Are we not aggressive enough on the administrative side? If Zenger wants to show value with the basketball program he needs to assemble the people that can address these eligibility issues in a timely manner. Considering Zenger has done very little to improve the football program; and he has very little to claim in assisting the basketball team in success; can he at least show some freakin' value to KU athletics?

No, the eligibility issues are a result of the poor recruiting overall. As it stands, Kentucky and Duke basically have there pick of recruits and have been locking up excellent classes early every fall. KU is then left to comete for the scraps those two programs didnt want.

You'd expect the recruits kentucky and duke pass on to be either not quite elite level athletes(which explans KU's overall underwhelming OAD experiments) or elite athletes with eligibility issues that UK/Duke don't want to deal with.

The bottom line is Self and Staff are not competing at the same level on the recruiting trail as Cal and K

Thank you Jack, took the words right out of my mouth. Guess Wiggins was scrap just like Jo Jo. I mean why would Cal & K want either one of them right ? I'm sure neither one of them was recruited by Kentucky OR DUKE huh Ben? love your train of thought, Glad to have you as a fan. Awsome logic

Wrong. Skal Labissiere was the only one predicted early on to be having a huge hurdle to prove himself eligible. But, what do you know? Cal has him good to go well before the start of the season. Chieck's HS teammates have seemed to find their way into college eligibility. Instead, the clearinghouse is digging into Chieck's grade school report cards. What the f--- kind of circus are they running and how has no one else that follows the sport caught on to the INCONSISTENCY???!!!

Something is definitely wrong with the numbers though. KU has handled too high a percentage of these cases. Nobody even comes close. Zenger needs to be more active here. More vocal at least. The NCAA is getting away with academic fraud basically, if the kid gets held out for no reason. Maybe even academic murder if he's held out for his entire OAD season.

I want a fix but still want to do it the right way. Cal gets his guys "however" he does. I don't want to go down that path. Obviously he's found a home with the kind of non-ethical booster backing that can and will keep him out of trouble.

North Carolina is in the same boat really. Free grades! Woohoo! Sign me up!

The Duke situation is different. Those kids have much more stringent requirements for eligibility. You would think sometimes a kid would be declared ineligible there. Or at least get investigated. I can't remember a single one.